


Astral Projection and Mutual Affection

by peacerose47



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Astral Projection, Dreamsharing, F/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5135330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacerose47/pseuds/peacerose47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Janeway/Chakotay relationship from a new perspective. Kes decides her services as match-maker are required in a rather unusual way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astral Projection and Mutual Affection

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this story, and the very idea for it, came from a writing prompt by AwesomeWritingPrompts.tumblr.com . This was originally meant to be more of a writing exercise than an actual story, so it may not flow very well. But at least I'm writing again. :)

Kes often found that her telepathic abilities were stronger at night, and this night was no exception. As had happened many nights before, she found herself slipping slowly into a place deeper than the dream state – a place where her mind was free. She had tried describing it to Tuvok once during one of her lessons in telepathy, but all he had had to say was that the Ocampan mind was still much of a mystery to all of the crew, and perhaps this was natural for her species, or perhaps it was a side-effect of their many meditation sessions. Either way, Kes enjoyed taking full advantage of the freedom these experiences gave her.

For one thing, her mind could transcend her normal perceptions, and she could hear more clearly the internal voices of the crew, could even see their dreams sometimes, though she was never able to share in them, merely observe. She took great delight in dipping into the exciting turmoil of B’Elanna Torres’ mind, as she spent yet another late night repairing damage from the latest Kazon attack. Or the calm, orderly mind of Captain Janeway, working off her insomnia with reports in the Ready Room. Once, she even looked in on a dream being created by Megan Delaney’s mind, and quickly decided that it was too… ‘stimulating’ for her.

At times she was able to visit incorporeally certain places on the ship that had meaning for her – the Mess Hall, where Neelix worked so hard to feed the crew; Sickbay, where the Doctor was usually still working through the night, needing no sleep; the Airponics Bay, where her special projects grew abundantly in their pots and trays, sprouting flowers to decorate quarters with or producing vegetables for Neelix to use.

But her favourite place to go during these times was the mind of Commander Chakotay.

To her fascination, she discovered in these moments of psychic clarity that the quiet man had a mind that was infinitely complex and skilled in ways he didn’t even know. Kes guessed his rituals with the Vision Quest and his _akoonah_ might have trained his mind in ways of which he was not aware consciously. His dreams were vivid, his mind agile and active, and it thrilled Kes no end that she could share in his exciting dreams and even give him some small amount of her mental energy to make his dreams that much more real.

And the most exciting thing she learned from sharing his unconscious mind, was his deep affection and respect for his Captain Kathryn Janeway.

_His_ Captain Janeway. Seeing through his eyes and his memories, Kes was able to meet her captain in an entirely new light – the light of a man utterly and irrevocably in love with her.

She saw through a dream of his memories how, when the dark matter energy beings had displaced his consciousness from his body, he had been able to merge with the minds of other crew members for brief periods, and how he had glimpsed some part of their inner being when he had done so. Tom Paris wasn’t as arrogant and care-free as he acted. B’Elanna had feelings deeper than anger and frustration. Harry Kim was wiser than he knew. And Captain Janeway, to him, was beautiful. He had caught a glimpse of her soul that day, Kes realized, learning from his mind how he had merged deeper with her mind than he had needed to, for emotional reasons he wouldn’t consciously admit.

But he wouldn’t dare approach her with these feelings, for he was still the ex-Maquis captain, and she was still his commanding officer, bound by rules and regulations.

The next time she was able, Kes decided to mentally probe Captain Janeway’s mind, to see if she could find there the answers Chakotay wanted. And she did find them. A whole portion of the Captain’s being devoted to the people she cared about. The crew that she led had a place there, though she did not have for them as deep a regard as she held for Tuvok. Who in turn, while a close friend and esteemed moral guide, did not hold her heart as strongly as her family did. Her mother, her sister, her fiancée, and her deceased father and her long-ago lover. But in the dead of night, when the Captain’s mind was relaxed and her guard down, Kes saw that her deepest tie of all was a bond of the soul. Her soul had become attached to a man she believed she had no hope with. A man who never knew that his affection was reciprocated.

Kes had been an avid studier of Alpha Quadrant cultures ever since she first came on board _Voyager_ , and she had learned through the reading of recreational texts the term ‘hopeless romantic’. That night, she decided that the term most definitely applied to her. And that night, she made a decision.

She did not tell anyone of her decision, for fear they would consider it meddling and tell her not to do it, and she had no intention of being dissuaded by anyone. On this night, she lay down in her bed, performed a meditation Tuvok had taught her for relaxation, and waited for unconsciousness to claim her.

On this night, her consciousness slipped through the various minds on the ship, seeking the intelligence of a Leader. She found said Leader still wide-awake, so she used every telepathic technique she had learned to steal the consciousness away from the unsuspecting mind. With the mind’s essence now unguarded and laid bare, she began slowly and gently imbuing it with her energy, then, trailing that energy behind her like a silver cord, began once more engaging the sleeping mind she loved most to visit. The cord now stretched between the two minds. Both souls were now bound by this ribbon of energy. Kes retreated softly and watched, waiting.

The more experienced mind was the first to make advances on the energy cord. Its being was still blissfully in oblivion, lying on his Starfleet-issue bed, as the Mind approached the new presence. The second mind was curious, but uncertain and unskilled. But with the connection already made, it was not long before Kes sensed the beginning of the two essences mingling, learning, discovering each other. A feeling of joy in accomplishment pervaded her being as her own mind began slowly creeping back towards consciousness.

The effect that was in evidence the next morning was subtle, and no one else would have noticed the difference. The Captain and Commander might have been standing a little closer together. He may have turned towards the turbolift doors seconds before she arrived on the Bridge. But only Kes could sense the newly-deepened connection, and she was pleased with the results.

 

The joined souls did not seem to require much more intervention, for they were finding their own way quickly enough. After only a few nights, Kes observed them moving closer together much more freely and easily. During the day, everyone could see the visible effects – Chakotay was more attentive to the Captain, and the Captain, although already an extremely tactile person, seemed to find reason to place her hand on his arm or his shoulder a little more often than she did anyone else. In the Mess Hall, there was speculation about the nature of the command team’s relationship, and Kes grinned with the knowledge that only she would truly know.

Then tragedy struck the ship. While on a planet gathering food supplies, the Captain and Commander had wandered off together and were bitten by a harmless-looking insect, which had injected into their bodies an unidentifiable toxin which was altering their body chemistry in mysterious ways. As soon as they beamed up from the planet, they began to experience disastrous effects, negated only by a hasty return to the surface, and Kes had beamed down to them with several medical instruments to try to determine the cause and help the Doctor develop a cure. Over two weeks later, they were forced to admit defeat and leave their beloved command team behind. The night that they left orbit, Kes tried to send her mind to visit them, but she had exhausted herself both physically and mentally, and all she found was emptiness.

Almost three months later, _Voyager_ was back in the planet’s orbit, carrying a cure that they had, in effect, stolen from a Vidiian ship. Kes was sent down with a med-kit as soon as they arrived. What she found there startled her. Her empathic abilities having increased in skill with her frequent meditations, as soon as she approached the metallic shelter she was overcome by mixed emotions, most predominately sadness. Within a few minutes of greeting the command team she realized the cause of those feelings – they didn’t want to leave. The crew had been ecstatic about finding a cure, but not once had they stopped to consider that the Captain and Commander – _Kathryn and Chakotay_ – might not want to leave their paradise. Kes sensed this in her mind, but to her eyes her commanding officers were nothing less than professional, with no doubts about resuming their duties and lives aboard the starship.

To all outward appearances, nothing had changed between the two as Captain and Commander resumed their places on the Bridge and ordered the ship back out of orbit. But Kes knew better.

That night, she let her mind drift about the thoughts, the voices, on the ship. She picked her way through different minds until she found the ones she was looking for. And was surprised by how close their bond had grown over those three months. Their minds and essences were practically indistinguishable in their united unconscious state. Kes believed they were probably even manifesting in each other’s dreams, though she wasn’t sure if they realized or remembered it.

The next morning in Sickbay, she reviewed the scans the Doctor had taken of them and compared it with previous records. It seemed their brain patterns were different slightly. Whatever it was that had altered their bodies to connect them to the planet so completely had also changed their brains’ energy patterns. _Which might just have intensified what was already there_ , Kes realized.

As time went by, she saw by day how close and intuitive the command team were with each other, and she knew that most of the crew were speculating and participating in betting pools about what had gone on between them on that planet, and whether they were in a relationship. Most agreed they were, and Kes hated to disillusion them. For by night, she realized that, despite how close they were, both believed there was no chance for a relationship between them to work, no matter how desperately they both craved the intimacy.

 

Over the next months, Kes simply watched and observed, using her physical eyes and her telepathic senses. She knew Chakotay’s jealousy and fear as Kathryn was pursued by… others. She saw through his dreams how terrified and hopeless he had felt when he believed he had lost her in that crashed shuttle. Kathryn’s fear had stood out to her as unusual for the normally calm and collected Captain, when Chakotay disappeared while on a scouting mission and they found him with a community of Borg. On the occasion that Kes found herself travelling backward through time, she observed in the older Captain Chakotay a deep sadness that she couldn’t quite place, until she sensed in an earlier timeframe an almost tangible snap as Captain Janeway was killed in battle and the bond between her and Chakotay was severed quite forcefully. She saw with her eyes and her mind the moment that a part of him died as his eyes came to rest on her limp, lifeless body. When Kes was stabilized in her proper timeframe she was determined to confront Chakotay about the future she had seen, and push him to take advantage of the opportunity he still had. But to her disappointment, she did not see any development in Chakotay and Kathryn’s relationship. She began to think she might have to accept that, while they were on a ship with regulations to be obeyed, there would not be any kind of deeper relationship between these two people.

And then came the Borg. A terrifying statement at any time, but during this encounter the Captain came up with the insane idea of collaborating with them to destroy the alien species from the foreign realm. And when Kes began receiving visions from this hostile trans-galactic race and knew how terrifying and dangerous they were, she started to agree with the Captain’s decision. Unfortunately, Chakotay did not see the Captain’s point of view, and their relationship survived the event in much the same shape as the ship itself – falling to pieces, and battered beyond belief.

Kes wasn’t sure if their friendship would survive the falling out, but against hope it did. And by the time she left, they were almost back to their strange form of normal.

She didn’t want to leave _Voyager_ , but she did want to explore what was happening to her, and knew that if she stayed to do that she would put the ship and crew in danger. Captain Janeway came to see her and tried to argue her decision, but Kes had made up her mind. And if there was one thing she had learned from her captain, it was tenacity. Kathryn enveloped Kes in a tearful hug goodbye, and Kes clung on tightly, not wanting this part of her life to end, even while she was eager for whatever was to come next. In that moment of emotional connection, she found her mind and thoughts seeking a familiar place, and in a second’s decision she started to leave a parting gift.

Her powers had become much stronger in the last year, more so in the past few weeks. With an amount of effort she almost didn’t notice, it took only a second for Kes to find the bond she had encouraged the creation of and give a final gift to the captain and mentor she felt she owed so much to. Before the hug ended, that tiny connection, started from a spark, began to grow into a bond a Vulcan couple would be impressed with. The Captain didn’t seem to notice, starting to speak again as she was, and then Kes realized that she wouldn’t have a chance to explain anything, as she realized that that last act of taxing her mind had escalated the chain of events that were leading to her next stage of life. Things began happening quickly, and Kes knew she was not strong enough to keep these powerful effects in check. But with the help of her captain and her respected Vulcan mentor, she made it to a shuttle and began to speed away to a distance from which she would not hurt her friends. She saw her crewmates on the view screen and determined, with a last ditch effort, to give one final thank-you to the crew who had done so much for her in her three years with them. Ten-thousand light-years wouldn’t be a lot in the larger picture of their journey home, but she did not have the strength in that moment for anything more.

Even while her molecules were fluctuating and transforming, Kes knew there was one thing she could be sure of and take comfort in. On some level she knew that there were some souls that naturally and inextricably bonded, and she also knew that what was between the Captain and Commander was even stronger than that. They might believe that they were not able to have a relationship until they reached Earth and were removed from the command structure, but the bond that drew them together would never die, and in a sense it gave them a relationship already. It would still be there if they were light-years apart, and it would be with them until their dying day. No matter what happened, or who tried to come between them, they would always find each other again. That was a certainty.

And with that comforting knowledge, Kes smiled a blissful smile, and gave in to her new life.


End file.
